by Tracy Clark
“It was my son, Eduardo, who told me,” she said, not taking her eyes off the images of Cora leaning over the dead children. “He finally got through on the phone lines after the earthquake.” I pulled her up into a hug, and she sagged against me, her wiry gray head barely reaching my chest. “I had to tell him that Mari was dead.” The groan that came from her gripped my emotions like a fist. “His brother, his daughter. I had to break my last child’s heart.”
“I’m so sorry,” I said, rubbing her back. I let her sag into the threadbare chair.
“He told me to turn on the news. You don’t seem surprised.”
“I saw. It’s all over Santiago.”
“It’s all over the entire world. She’ll be lost to us now. The vultures will tear her apart.”
“Don’t forget that I spoke to her and that she’s okay, for now, and she’s doing everything she can to get here.”
Mami Tulke’s palms pressed together, and she rocked back and forth with her eyes closed, pressing tears out of their corners. “It’s all I want,” she said, opening her eyes. “My granddaughter safe and home with us.”
“We both want that.”
“The one person in this world I would shield from harm, and I can’t. I try every day, but my connection to Cora is lost. My granddaughter is pursued and hunted, and my sortilege can’t help her at all.”
“I will use every power within me, both natural and supernatural, to protect her. I swear it.” She patted my face with her hand and nodded. There was no more to say about Cora. Our hearts would chug and churn, clotted by worry, until she was with us again.
“Claire is sleeping in your room again,” Mami Tulke told me. “She tells me you are going to teach her how to be more aware of her energy and the energy of people around her. I think that’s wise,” she said, not waiting for me to answer, and she offered no explanation. It made me wonder if anything had happened while I was gone.
I pulled my phone out and showed her the texted photograph from Cora. “Your key did unlock something,” I said with an encouraging smile. Mami Tulke’s face stretched into astonishment as she looked from the picture to me. “It’s the most beautiful painting I’ve ever seen,” she whispered. Her eyes pierced mine. “And the most frightening.”
“Yes. This is the kind of painting that can unhinge society.”
If anyone in the church ever knew Jesus was a different breed of human, a Scintilla, then they’ve distorted it and covered it up and used their falsehood to control millions upon millions of people. How would those people react to knowing the truth? Would any heart be open to the knowledge that there were descendants of his race among them now, that they themselves might carry faint traces of the light?
If not, then the givers of light would have no allies in this world. They wouldn’t even need the Arrazi to kill us all. Fired up by the religious authorities who could easily declare that we are some manifestation of devilry, would armies of humans turn on us—would they crucify us?
My morning belonged to Claire. She delighted me. I could have deeper conversations with her than most adults. If Dr. M could be credited with anything, it was that he’d obviously taken care to challenge Claire’s considerable intellect. I burned to know who her mother was, but I supposed it didn’t really matter. She wasn’t Scintilla.
Claire grabbed a fistful of grass and tossed it aside. “I wanted to do Qigong again yesterday, but they wouldn’t let me.”
“Did they say why?” I asked, feeling the noose of parental overprotection slip around me and squeeze my stomach.
“No. I think it’s because I’m not Scintilla,” she said.
“How would you know who is and who isn’t?” I asked, amused.
Her eyes—blue like mine but with the triple dots of black that marked her for abnormality—looked at me with absolute certainty. “Because you told me to pay attention to energy and I did. You all feel different to me than regular people do. You feel like Abraham did.”
“Clever girl.” She had the ability to so easily detect the nuances of people’s energy with little to no instruction. She’d grown up very close to Abraham, Teruko’s Scintilla grandfather, who lived with her at Dr. M’s. She’d discovered how to recognize the same essence of aura when she felt it again. “That’s very good, Claire. Let’s work on your ability to be less spongy when it comes to the energies of others. It’s rather like hands. You wouldn’t want people to come up and touch you without your permission, right?”
“Certainly not!” she said emphatically.
I nodded. “Our energies do that, too. It’s like invisible hands. I want to teach you to be more considerate not to touch people’s energy with your own, and possibly how to make a bubble around yourself so other people can’t touch yours.”
For two hours, we worked on teaching Claire to create a protective bubble of light around her astral body. I could see when it worked; despite how large her aura was, she was able to ground herself quite well when I thrust energy at her. I had to remind her multiple times that while I knew it was a good feeling when a Scintilla gave of their energy, she shouldn’t let her aura get greedy as she had a tendency to do.
When she grew bored or tired of our game, her aura released like air from a balloon and she hopped up, ready to move her physical body and let her energetic body be free for a while.
Initially it made me happy to see, until I realized that though I couldn’t see her after she rounded the house, her aura was still attached to mine. Was it normal for a child to be so psychically attached to their parent? I knew parents often latched unknowingly onto their children’s auras, tethering their energies together, but Claire’s aura roped around me tightly and didn’t let go.
Chapter Thirty-Four
Cora
“I like the way you think.” The first words I heard as Edmund shook me awake.
“Thanks,” I said, squinting at the unnatural glaring light in the room and rubbing my hand over my head as if all of my hair might have sprouted back overnight. I hadn’t slept well because I was too aware of my head as it brushed the pillow like a live wire every time I rolled over. I sat up and swayed my neck. My head felt twenty pounds lighter.
From Edmund’s frenetic energy, I figured that we should get up, get ready, and do it in a hurry. “The movie crew’s departure time is five a.m. A boat will take us to the airport where the chartered planes are waiting. We’re to meet the girl who is going to get you on the plane as flight crew.”
I quickly showered because who knew when I’d be able to again? Edmund made another run to the lobby for makeup to cover my forehead and neck markings and for black eyeliner to complete my “look.”
Before we left the hotel, I texted both Finn and Giovanni, telling them that I’d be out of service for a day and that, with luck, I’d find my way “home.” Not playing nice, my head repeated something I’d said to my mother once.
There is no home for the hunted.
I needn’t have worried about fitting in.
The movie crew was the most varied, scrubby, tattooed bunch of people I’d seen in a while. Edmund greeted his friend, Rod, while Dun and I stood around shuffling our feet, exchanging stupid glances. Honestly, Dun got more curious stares than I did, a nerve-wracking reminder that I wasn’t the only one on that video. The world wanted to know more about the “heavenly hunk” who whisked me away from St. Peter’s Square. The media loved to point out that twice now I’d been pulled away from a scene by dashing young men. After hearing that on the news this morning, Dun and I had laughed, and I threatened to call him “heavenly hunk” as much as possible.
What made us want to puke was Serena Tate, queen of the VIPs at our school, affecting a tragic demeanor as she spoke of how close we all were and how badly she missed her besties. “Is it bad to hope an Arrazi finds her deliciously irresistible?” I said to Dun.
My head felt like a heat-releasing orb outside in the chill of the Venice early morning. My body shook, but that was more from nerves
than cold. In the small terminal for private commercial aircraft, I met Angelica. Her eyes smiled, which I liked, as she gave me a uniform to put on. “You won’t need to actually do any work,” she said. “You’re faking as a crewmember who’s using what we call the jump seat. It’s how we bum rides off each other to places we want to go.”
“I appreciate it,” I said, feeling shy all of a sudden and very grateful that a stranger would put herself out for me—someone she didn’t know—just because she’d been told I was a girl who needed help. I think I’d started to lose my faith in humanity.
“Don’t know what you’re running from, but I hope you get far enough away from it to feel safe.”
“It’d have to be pretty far,” I said, going into the stall to change. I slipped the badge around my neck and repeated the information over and over to memorize it. I remember Mari telling me how she used a friend’s fake ID once, and the bouncer grilled her on her address, birthdate, and even her astrological sign. The girl whose ID I’d borrowed was an Aquarius, like my dad.
To my utter surprise, the boarding process was quick and easy. Angelica checked me in with a sly grin. Edmund, Dun, and I sat in a row together near the back of the plane. My heart could have powered the jet engines until we were airborne, climbing into the clouds, no longer on Italian soil.
The many hours en route on our first leg gave me ample time to retrace my steps through Italy and clutch the information I’d gathered like tiny crystals in my palm. Dante and Michelangelo: one had tried to tell the truth in rhyme, one had tried to tell the truth—and keep the truth safe—by dropping visual clues in his art. Michelangelo’s key unlocked his secret painting revealing Jesus and his mother as Scintilla. Xepa had a personal connection within the Vatican in Cardinal Báthory, who just happened to run the office that once ran the Inquisition. I knew that didn’t indict the whole church, but it sure wasn’t a good sign. There was power and money behind that office and a history of misdeeds recorded by the key and by the history books.
The key solved one mystery—why the church would want to keep us a secret—but didn’t solve why the Scintilla were known as The Light Keys to Heaven. I’d felt nothing but defenseless and utter powerlessness since this all began, and as I stared down at the world outside the window, I wondered, what power did we have that could so scare the church?
Dante embedded the number three in nearly every way in his work. Michelangelo’s only signed work, The Pieta, had a hidden tri and he was known to use three interlocked circles as his signature. The painting of Mary and Jesus had silver auras and showed the colored auras of humanity behind them, it had triple spirals, and it had a drawing of my key with a very cryptic sentence about the key’s ability to store the church’s misdeeds. It also had the hexagram.
If the hexagram stood for reconciliation of opposites, as Arrazi and Scintilla were so clearly opposites, then Xepa’s insignia pointed to their agenda, their mission to divide the two races. It begged the question: what was so threatening about uniting the two races?
I don’t need you. I need you dead. When every last Scintilla dies, then the truth dies with you. Ultana’s words. She said that she was tired of her tedious job of ridding the world of our kind. There had to be something the Scintilla were capable of, something threatening to the Arrazi, threatening to existing power structures. My mother told me once that she’d tried to bring a bird back to life. But it stayed dead. I’d saved lives. Could all Scintilla do what I did? Or was it a sortilege? Could I have more than one?
Edmund snapped closed his laptop and grinned at his own notes. He’d been reading and scribbling, and every so often, thumbing through the bible. His hair stood on end like I’d always made fun of when I’d seen him on TV. I’d thought that was just his way of being showy, but no, he looked just as nutty in real life.
It was obvious Edmund wanted to talk to me, especially in the way his aura practically tapped my shoulder for attention. “I have some great stuff here. Great stuff. Listen to this… In Matthew 5:14-16 Jesus said, ‘You are the light of the world. A town built on a hill cannot be hidden. Neither do people light a lamp and put it under a bowl. Instead they put it on its stand, and it gives light to everyone in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before others, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your Father in heaven.’”
I opened my mouth to respond, but Edmund very excitedly pointed to another note. “This one’s even better.” His voice lowered as he realized his volume was matching his excitement. “In Luke 8:46 Jesus said, ‘Someone touched me. I could feel the power go out of me.’”
“No way.”
Edmund’s head tipped sideways and his eyebrows reached far up as if to say, “WAY!” “Uncanny, in the context of everything you’ve told me.”
Uncanny was right. If I let myself imagine Jesus as a Scintilla, it wasn’t hard to imagine him strolling through a dusty market busy with crowds of people who congregated around his energy and reputation. I could easily imagine an Arrazi following close behind and slyly taking from him. The hair on my arms stood on end just thinking about it. How else could anyone have the capability to pull power from Jesus Christ? Who but an Arrazi could do that?
“Is there more?” I asked, peeking at his crazy scribbles.
“I’m going to keep looking. And I want to check into the noncanonical gospels, as well. Many weren’t included because of verbiage that was deemed heretical by the officials who decided which books would be included in the official canon. If there were allusions to anything that would support Jesus being like you at—” Edmund looked past me and made eyes to alert me that a few people were waiting for the lavatory and standing in the aisle right next to us. It’d have to wait.
As the flight progressed, I felt more at ease. It had something to do with leaving the Vatican behind but also because we were ignored for the most part by everyone around us. There were a few curious glances, but no more curious than could be explained away by the fact that we weren’t part of their film crew.
My brain kept stirring the pot of what Edmund had found. I was no bible expert by any stretch, but what else could Jesus have meant? Just as when he said, “These things I can do, you can do also,” why wasn’t anyone talking about what he really meant by that? It was thrilling to think there were needles of truth in the proverbial haystack. Even though Edmund couldn’t speak freely while the people were standing so close, the hairs on my arms still hadn’t let down. At first, I’d figured it for excitement, but I realized that my body was on high alert, and when I tuned in to what it was telling me, it was screaming that my enemy was near.
I was thirty thousand feet in the air, trapped in a metal can with wings—with an Arrazi.
Chapter Thirty-Five
Finn
“You’d curse your own sister?”
My foot kicked and connected with Lorcan’s ribs before I even thought to wonder how he might put another geis on me again in retaliation. It wasn’t Saoirse’s fault her mother “gifted” her with running Xepa. He’d lashed out at his sister when his dead mother wasn’t an option. There might have been many legitimate revenue sources, investments, and ventures to manage, but Ultana also had Xepa, and it was the business of extermination. As far as I was concerned, Ultana’s decision to place her daughter at the head was the first curse to be placed on Saoirse.
Saoirse hadn’t moved from behind the desk. She looked at her brother in stupefied horror, her petite frame shaking with either fear, or rage, or both. Another emotion glinted in her eyes and was the closest approximation to hatred I’d seen on Saoirse’s delicate face. “Learn how to use your sortilege, really,” she said, almost derisively, as if she was unconcerned with her own death. “How can you possibly quantify half?” she asked him. It was an unexpected question. “How about I take the important half and give you the grunt work you deserve?”
That girl constantly threw me. I was impressed but also worried she was right. Would she drop dead in one moment of decision
where her brother wasn’t consulted? “Intention,” I pondered aloud. Her eyes snapped to me and I clarified. “You’d have to know what he intended when he put the geis on you in order to play by his rules.”
A slow smile spread across her face. “Exactly. See, Finn,” she said. “We do make a good team.” She turned to her brother, who was clutching his ribs with one hand and his bloody lip with the other as he stood. “Tell me what you expect, Lorcan. I will not die because you throw your sortilege around as sloppily as your pints.”
“Not now,” he said, looking a scary shade of gray-green.
“Now!” we both shouted at him, knowing that what his thoughts were at that moment dictated the terms of her geis. I’d block the damn door if I had to.
Lorcan practically looked regretful. It was so easy to throw out threatening words, but now he had to work to justify them with a cognitive explanation. “We have equal access to all information. I will have access to the computer and files. Decisions are made together.” He took a breath. “But what I was really thinking was that when it comes to this Scintilla business and Xepa, it’s absolutely transparent. You do not get to do whatever you want with them. I want in on it all. You do not run the show. We run the show.”
Shite. Fookin’ shite.
Lorcan Lennon was going to be the stub in our wheel of change.
Evidently, Saoirse had the same thought. The apology on her face when she looked at me sent waves of frustration through my body. If she was hog-tied by her brother, how was I going to influence the Arrazi to abandon their mission of hunting and killing the remaining Scintilla?
As Lorcan wordlessly left the room, he also left the door open. I didn’t want to give the lub more credit than was due, but it seemed to me that his leaving the office door open was a metaphor and a message: no locks.
When I heard his door slam upstairs, I had two questions for Saoirse, the first of which she anticipated before I asked it. “I need to think about this, Finn. I’m still on your side, but I need to think about how. How would it even be possible to work behind his back? I know you’re”—she bit her lip—“I know what this means to you—but I’m not willing to die for the Scintilla.”